After the U.S. killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani at the beginning of January, President Donald Trump and his administration have provided conflicting explanations of why they pursued the attack.
The Department of Defense’s first press release on the slaying said that the “strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” However, Trump and other officials have provided different accounts of the scope of Soleimani’s plans, while failing to provide evidence of their claims.
Here is what Trump, his administration and lawmakers have said so far regarding the intelligence that led the U.S. to kill Soleimani.
President Donald Trump
On Thursday, Trump said that Soleimani had planned to “blow up” the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, but later on the same day at a rally in Toledo, Ohio, he said the Iranian general had planned to attack multiple U.S. embassies. On Friday, he claimed four U.S. embassies had been at risk of attack.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper
On Sunday during an interview with CNN, Esper said that intelligence showed there was a plan to attack the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
However, he told CBS in a separate interview that he didn’t see intelligence that showed a threat against four U.S. embassies, breaking with Trump’s claim.
Army Gen. and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley
Milley said last week that intelligence showed an attack against U.S. military forces would have been “very clear in scale” and “imminent,” but also said the intelligence didn’t provide essential details like “who, what, when (or) where.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Pompeo told reporters on Friday: “We had specific information on an imminent threat, and those threats included attacks on U.S. embassies. Period, full stop.”
NPR reported that he wouldn’t define what he meant by “imminent,” instead offering that threats were “against American facilities, including American embassies, military bases.”
Pompeo said on Thursday on Fox News: “There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks that were being plotted by Qassem Soleimani. We don’t know precisely when, and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.”
What did lawmakers say about the information they’ve received about the strike?
Republican and Democratic members of Congress said the briefings lacked important details, like the intelligence behind the Soleimani killing and the military’s future strategy in Iran.
Some highlights:
- Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) called the briefing “insulting” and “the worst briefing on a military issue” during his time in the Senate. The briefing led him to support a war powers resolution that would limit Trump’s ability to strike Iran.
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) said the House briefing provided “no raw evidence” that an imminent threat existed before the strike took place.
- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told the Washington Post that the briefing only referenced the Baghdad embassy when mentioning protests that took place there in December. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) also said that he didn’t hear about an embassy threat during the briefing.
- Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Delaware) said on CNN that the Trump administration didn’t offer hard evidence that Soleimani planned to target the Baghdad embassy, and Sen. Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) made a similar statement on MSNBC.
Contact Big If True editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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